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<title>let go of loss, not love by Evandar</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25133524">let go of loss, not love</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar'>Evandar</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Don’t copy to another site, Drabble Series, Grief/Mourning, Inspired by Orpheus and Eurydice (Ancient Greek Religion &amp; Lore), M/M, Necromancy as a Coping Method, Post-Canon, Smoking, Swearing, Temporary Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 10:40:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,000</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25133524</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Unable to cope with Eddie's death, Richie returns to Derry.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Multifandom Drabble 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>let go of loss, not love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeby10/gifts">reeby10</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I hope you enjoy, reeby10!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He breathes in. The smoke scorches; it tastes of ash and grief, but he holds it in his lungs and mouth before exhaling slowly, grey curls spilling into the cold air. He looks less like a dragon than he sees himself as in his mind’s eye; more like a washed-up loser who walked out on his own show, too caught up in loss to care about the bomb he just dropped on his career.</p><p>He hates Derry. Hates that he ever came back here. Hates that he came back <i>again</i>, but knows that he had to. To bring Eddie back.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Hell is the Niebolt House. Even with the clown gone, the air is heavy with lingering traces of It’s hate and anger and <i>fear</i>. He kind of gets what It meant now, when It told them fear was a seasoning. He picks his way through debris: fallen beams and shattered furniture, re-traces the steps he’s taken too many times already, and heads to the cellar. He tries to be quiet. Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier tries to be quiet, news at eleven! He knows he’s poking at a history best left buried, but he can’t move on. Not with Eddie still missing.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>His body had never washed out of the sewers. Bill had said it was because he’d died in the cavern, but all that means to Richie is that Eddie’s still down there. Trapped in the Hell they all threw themselves into. A Hell that’s vastly changed: the clown’s trash-pile is gone, the sewer pipes decimated. Greywater pours down into the dark of the cavern beneath Derry, but when Richie shines his flashlight down there, he sees stone and rubble instead of an underground garbage lake.</p><p>He checks his line’s secure before lowering himself down one last time, into the dark.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Mike told them all about the benevolent turtle in his drug-fuelled hallucinations. It was Bill who’d known its name: Maturin. Down here, in the cold, cramped darkness of the clown’s former lair, that name has a kind of weight to it.</p><p>Before he’d come here, Richie had wondered what he would need if this insanity was going to work. If he’d need a bong and some super-strength weed to get high enough to talk to a magic turtle god. Instead he’s got a pack of cigarettes Eddie that would kill him for smoking, and Eddie’s old inhaler in his pocket.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He lights up. The cigarette glows cherry red in the darkness as he takes his first breath. The taste of it, the smell, isn’t quite strong enough to block out the stink of the sewers and the lingering damp-like stench of the clown. The reek of It’s former lair is cloying, and it sticks in the back of Richie’s throat as he closes his eyes and waits. He doesn’t know for what. </p><p>The last time he was here, his world ended. The man he loved died in his arms, speared through by a monster and choking on his own blood.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t know how long he sits and smokes. Time passes strangely in the places where gods <strike>used to</strike> dwell. He keeps his eyes closed and loses track of the cigarettes; turns Eddie’s inhaler over and over in his free hand. He cries, he knows, and he screams as well, but the sound is washed away by rushing greywater. In the end, he is numb: cold down to his very core, and although his lungs are burning, his soul is finally quiet.</p><p>When he stands, he keeps his eyes closed. He leaves the empty carton and the inhaler behind him.</p><p> </p><p>He climbs and walks and stumbles through the Niebolt House with his eyes closed. In his mind he’s thirteen again: dumb and in love and too much of a coward to say a word about it. He keeps up a steady commentary to the watchful thing that follows him: how <i>fucked</i> his life is, how the world kept turning in Eddie’s absence. He’s, like, ninety percent sure he hasn’t accidentally resurrected the clown: It would have killed him before he reached the door.</p><p>He doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t turn around, until he’s standing in the middle of Niebolt Street.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He’s lived his whole life in fear. A consummate coward. Even now, with the sun on his face, and warmth beginning to seep back into his bones, he’s afraid of what he’s done. Afraid of what he might <i>not</i> have done: if Eddie isn’t behind him, he doesn’t think he’ll survive it. </p><p>Out of the two of them, Eddie’s always been the bravest. So Richie stands and waits, eyes still shut, until an arm slides around his waist and a warm body presses up against his back.</p><p>“Oh, thank fuck you’re not a murder-clown,” he whispers.</p><p>Alive again, Eddie laughs.</p><p> </p><p>They leave Derry. Eddie steals the keys and mutters something about not wanting Richie to go through all that effort just to kill him by speeding. He looks exactly how he did the day he died: dark hair threaded with silver; crowfeet at the corners of his eyes. Richie wants to kiss them. Wants to kiss Eddie. Instead, he gets to watch him as Eddie aims the Camaro south and gets them the hell out of town. He’s exhausted but he can’t sleep. Can’t take his eyes off him. </p><p>He buys them shitty coffee at a gas station once they hit Massachusetts, and Eddie wrinkles his nose sceptically before he’s even tasted it. The judgement is deserved. They drink it anyway, basking in the silence and the warmth of each other’s company.</p><p>“That was really stupid of you,” Eddie says once his cup is empty.</p><p>“Since when have I been able to make an intelligent decision without you?” Richie asks. “Huh, Eds?”</p><p>Eddie laughs at him. He laughs until Richie decides to be brave; until he leans across the centre console and kisses him. Then he chuckles into Richie’s mouth as he pulls him closer, heart pounding under Richie’s palm.</p>
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